Teenage pregnancy in South Africa - with a specific focus on school-going learners Education Increasing access to education among women has been identified as one of the main reasons for the systematic decline in fertility since the 1970s. One of the greatest achievements since democracy in SA is the massive expansion in access to education, especially in the enrolment of African youth and women. Access to primary schooling is universal (104%) and secondary school enrolment (80%) is high (Schindler, 2008). Data from the 1998 SADHS shows a strong inverse relationship between education and teenage fertility (DOH, MRC & Measure DHS, 2002). Teenage mothers are concentrated among those with only primary education (38.5%) but declines progressively among those with some secondary education (12.9%), matric (7.9%) and those with higher education (4.0%) (see Table 2). Despite the protective effect that schooling exerts over sexual behaviour (girls in school are less like to be sexually active than girls out of school and are more likely to use contraception (NRC & IOM, 2005), the risk of pregnancy during ages at which girls are attending school increases. Data from 28 demographic and health surveys showed that countries in which enrolment were high were more likely to report pregnancy as a reason for school dropout (NRC & IOM, 2005). The converse is true for countries reporting low enrolment; girls will not be in school during their reproductive years. This relationship is clear when enrolment is below 20% but a mixed effect is evident when enrolment increases above 50%, suggesting that schooling, depending on the context, can have a mediating effect on reproductive health behaviour (NRC & IOM, 2005). The South African schooling system is characterised by both high enrolment and high rates of repetition, dropout, late entry and re-entry meaning that a significant number of older learners, well past the onset of puberty, can be found in lower grades (Schindler, 2008). As a result, the system has had to accommodate traditionally high rates of teenage fertility. Studies have reported that over a third of girls below 19 years of age who had an early pregnancy were attending school in 1993 (Maharaj, Kaufman & Richter, 2000). A similar trend was evident in KZN in 2001 (Hallman & Grant, 2003). But the relationship that teenagers have with school can influence their sexual behaviour and as a result, early pregnancy. When teenagers feel a sense of attachment or connection to school and are successful at school, they are less likely to fall pregnant. School attachment, academic achievement and higher aspirations for education offer incentives to teenagers to avoid pregnancy (Kirby, 2002, Santelli, Lowry, Brener & Robin, 2000). On the other hand, when the relationship with schooling is tenuous, either through dislike of school (Imamura et al., 2007), poor academic achievement (Cassell, 2002) or poor expectations of furthering education (Imamura et al., 2007) girls are more likely to become pregnant. While many studies report on pregnancy as the reason for school dropout, recent studies are contesting the direction of this relationship (Cassell, 2002). The KZN Transitions study reported that for males, the inability to pay school fees (31%) and the need to work (22%) were the main reason for dropout, while for females, pregnancy (39%) and the inability to pay school fees (30%) were cited as reasons for dropout (Rutenberg et al., 2001). But the implicit assumption that girls who dropout of school because of pregnancy would have continued their education may not be valid (NRC & IOM, 2005). Pregnancy may be the endpoint most directly associated with dropout but is often not the cause. Pregnancy and school dropout in fact share many common social and economic antecedents (Lloyd & Mensch, 2008), the most significant of which are poverty and poor academic achievement (Cassell, 2002). Lloyd and Mensch (1999) contend that “rather than pregnancy causing girls to drop out, the lack of social and economic opportunities for girls and women and the domestic demands placed on them coupled with the gender inequities of the education system, may result in unsatisfactory
38